Law Librarians Role in KM

We at OOTJ usually limit ourselves to covering the law school library beat, but here's an important paper noted by UK blog excited utterances:

In Libraries and Librarians: a Link Between Legal Information Services and Firm Productivity?, Margaret Aby Carroll, Library Sites Manager, Microsoft Corporation and Yvonne J. Chandler, Associate Professor, at University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science, seek to answer the following questions:

"Can an analysis of the characteristics of libraries or information centers and librarians in highly productive law firms yield operational models and standards which contribute to their . . . [firm's] productivity?”

"Is it possible to determine which variables make the greatest (perceived or real) contribution to the firm’s productivity?"

Important implications for study findings include:

(a) generation of staffing guidelines, e.g., appropriate credentials, optimum ratio of professionals to paraprofessionals, optimum ratio of staff to customers

(b) development of a criteria for resource allocation decisions

(c) identification and ranking of library and librarian services providing greatest contribution to productivity

(d) identification of measures to successfully demonstrate return-on-investment (ROI) on information services investment